The AOL PhotoCam has gone from “my curiosity” to “my nemesis” to “my fairweather obsession I somehow now own five of”. I know more about the PhotoCam than AOL did. I’ve seen the way these things break. I can tell when I got each of them by their specific damage. The search for a single working unit has been going on six years now, and I think we’ve found the end of it–because I now own two working units, one complete in the box.
If you know the story, I have more to update you on. If you don’t know the story, strap in! I’ve got a tale of temperamental retro tech, operator error, Redditor intrigue, and new perspectives on the futility of 30-year-old cameras and perhaps life itself. Yes, there will be photos. Hopefully, you find this a satisfying end to the saga.
A yearning for crunchy photos
We start in 2019. An angstier, lovelorn Cammy has been watching too many LGR retro digital camera things and decides to buy his own. The interest was artsy. These cameras handled colors oddly, they were hazy and crunchy–objectively not great, but subjectively very appealing, in an undefined, dreamy sorta way. Yes, it’s not lost on me the amount of time and money I’ve spent trying to get intentionally crappy photos.
Anyway, problem being, LGR owns plenty of vintage computers that can accept tons of weird, long-forgotten hookups, and Cammy does not. He also has very little money and doesn’t know where to get said computers. Instead, Cammy sets his sights on a camera that hits three specific targets:
- It had to take CompactFlash. (If you’re too young, CF cards are just gigantic SD cards, basically.) I didn’t own any computers with serial ports at the time, and a CF slot would let me stick the card in a reader and get the photos that way.
- It had to shoot in 640×480. The aim really was to get a specific look and era here–any newer and higher res and the photos would either be too good or it would be the wrong kind of crunchy. Webcam crunchy, not retro digicam crunchy.
- Traditional bodied cameras only. No QuickTake 100 binocucom cameras, and no Mavicas. Nothing against them, just not what I wanted.
A bit of digging around on retro digicam museum sorta sights led me to the AOL PhotoCam, and it seemed perfect. It hit all the right boxes, units were cheap online, and it was AOL-branded dammit, so old people might go “ooh I remember that” while I’m out using it. The Digitalkamera Museum (a very good website for digicam history) even described it as
AOL’s digital cameras can be found frequently on eBay by the way and are a good starting point for a vintage digital camera collection.
Oh, how I got snookered.
What history I’ve been able to piece together about the AOL PhotoCam
I’ve told a lot of this before, but here’s my attempt at laying it all out in long and accurately this time–at least as accurately as I’m going to get from other spergs’ databases, old press releases, and L.A. Times articles from the 90s.
As I went over in the initial “Cammy vs. the PhotoCam”, AOL did not manufacture this camera. It was incredibly common in the 90s for large companies looking to branch out into other markets to rebadge no-name OEM devices instead. Computers got this treatment, as This Does Not Compute chronicled in the video he did on the “EasyNow PC”, aka the “E-Go 2 PC” and probably other names. In that one’s case, AMD built sort of a general spec of a PC for a price point, and resellers could rebrand it and lightly modify it for their specific market’s needs. In the case of the PhotoCam, AOL, alongside Vivitar, Mirage, and a bunch of others, licensed and rebranded units from an OEM named Pretec.
Information about Pretec is very hard to find–they tend to get conflated with companies with similar names, and you’ll also hear the name “Premier Image Technology” brought up around them (I’ve accidentally called Pretec Premier in the past). From what I can gather, Pretec was largely into the flash memory business, making flash drives and CF cards and the like, but apparently manufactured their own cameras for a few years in the late 90s. They would be bought by the competing Premier Image Technology Corporation in 2000 (guessing that’s why there’s no more Pretecs past that point), who themselves would be bought by none other than Foxconn in 2006. The Pretec brand would seemingly continue to be used to sell flash storage into the 2000s.
Another point of confusion: which Pretec unit AOL actually rebadged. Most places online refer to the PhotoCam as a rebadged DC-600 (and there’s two different cameras under that model name to make it all the worse), and indeed, the bodies are identical. Thing is, I now own both of those, and I know (despite my previous blog post stating confidently otherwise) they do not take identical photos. You can also see the model name on the underside of the PhotoCam. On all my units, Plus or otherwise, they are DC-620s, not DC-600s. I believe that the 620 uses a different sensor with better low-light capabilities, because the 600’s low-light performance is genuinely awful. Either you take photos in bright sunlight or you see nothing.
In 1998, AOL partnered with Kodak and retailers that processed its film to offer You’ve Got Pictures, a film digitization service for their subscribers. Through it, you could get JPGs of your film shots sent to your AOL email address when you went to get the physical prints developed. Remember that this was 1998, and everything was turning electronic. Folks were getting email addresses to send photos to grandma. AOL had their Geocities competitor AOL Hometown, and decorating your site with photos was a must. There was this gap between the Internet and the world of analog, in-your-hand film photography that AOL was looking to bridge.
If you didn’t want to wait to get photos developed, though, the PhotoCam, a purely digital camera, was available exclusively to AOL subscribers. You could simply use your computer at home to transfer what you shot yourself. Truly revolutionary stuff.
If at first you don’t succeed…
I spent six years trying to get a working PhotoCam. Not constantly, obviously–the pain of failure over and over soured me on the camera over the years. I also enjoy pain, though, so in the end, I kept coming back to try again. Let’s count the attempts:
Attempt #1 (2019): unit turned up dead
This is the PhotoCam I lamented in “Cammy vs. the PhotoCam”. I was very new to eBay, and the unit was only marked as “used”, not tested and working. I only had myself to blame for it, but at least the unit came with a manual, power adapter, and nice AOL carrying case, so when I eventually got a working one, I’d have all that stuff.
Attempt #2 (2022): seller never sent the thing
I’d gotten my first job finally, so with all my disposable income, I took another swing at getting a PhotoCam. This was an open box unit for $15, with shipping for as much. I messaged the seller to ask if it was tested and working, and I got a reply saying that stuff hadn’t even been unwrapped inside. It seemed like a safe enough bet, but I never received the item. eBay gave the seller a week after I said “hey what the fuck” to send it, they never replied further, and I got my money back. Ass, but at least I got a refund.
Attempt #3 (2022): a partially working Pretec
Thinking that PhotoCams were just cursed, I decided instead to purchase a Pretec DC-600, which should’ve gotten me at least something akin to a PhotoCam, branding aside. This was the unit I used in the “Cammy Revisits the PhotoCam” post, and while it powered on and was functional enough, I later learned it didn’t take the same shots as the PhotoCam, the battery door was broken (and holding it shut, which we’ll talk more about later, would eventually cause it to get worryingly hot), and it seemed 50/50 on if I could transfer photos off the CF card successfully. Some photos would just disappear into the aether, and even after formatting the card, old photos would come back somehow.
Close, but no PhotoCam. Also kinda spooky.
Attempt #4 (2023): camera turns to goo
I finally got a working unit–and then made the mistake of using the “format system memory” option an hour later. Apparently, it failed to complete the format and completely liquified the camera’s memory, never successfully saving a photo again, and only reading garbled static on photo recall. Last time I put batteries in it, the power LED would flash sadly before shutting off again. I’m thinking the internal memory was on its way out and I inadvertently sealed the coffin lid. Supremely disappointing. I was shattered.
Attempt #5 (2025): that’s not even the right camera
I got a Kodak EasyShare CX4200. Words cannot describe my exasperated laughter when I pulled that shit out of the box. I immediately got back in touch with the seller to tell him he sent me the wrong camera, to which he seemed to not notice the actual issue and instead focused on my telling him that, when he resells the EasyShare, to note the broken SD card slot in the listing. He told me not to send it back and just issued a refund.
Attempt #6 (2025): the seller makes it right
I was willing to roll with my EasyShare. God doesn’t want me to have a PhotoCam, all good. I even got a special USB cable for it so I could transfer photos from the internal memory, bypassing the SD card slot. To my surprise, though, the seller from attempt #5 got back in touch to ask, bizarrely, if he’d sent the wrong camera. He offered to send me the right camera this time, free of charge, even letting me keep the refund and EasyShare. I accepted, and a few days later, I had a working PhotoCam.
But wait! There’s more?
Before I get into anything I did with the camera, I want to take an absolutely bugfuck detour. I don’t know why I keep going on Reddit, if I’m honest. Like, I do. I’m in some subs for games and cameras and music, and it’s fun to see stuff you like and banter and take part in discussions, but hot damn if it isn’t an absolutely garbage website devoid of community and filled with the most pussy, preening, unaware, self-important men on the planet. You get these fucking guys who go on your profile and follow you around to your other posts to argue with you because you said some shit they don’t like, and they post fetish shit to your hobby spaces, and then they call you a kinkshaming douchebag because you don’t want to see anime feet in your Game Boy sub–anyway, cameras, yes.
In a slightly inebriated state, I posted my story to r/VintageDigitalCameras (pretty decent sub outside of the constant barrage of people asking for cheap old digicam recommendations, as if the hunt for one yourself isn’t half the fun). I figured if anyone was going to appreciate this nightmare I went through, it’d be them, but what I wasn’t expecting to see was someone with their own PhotoCam and offering it to me:
I should mention that outside of attempt #2, these were all loose units, no box, and with varying extras, usually only the carrying case. This person was offering to send me, for the price of shipping, a PhotoCam complete-in-box, with nothing except the camera itself having been unsealed. The camera was powered on and tested–the seller even formatted the memory successfully for me. Very funny, and I was touched. I definitely took them up on the offer.
I had skedaddled off to Wales by the time it got to me, but on coming back, waiting alongside a Wild Republic badger plushie I ordered (Caby wanted the one I got from her back) was a box from Philly–the same side of the state as me even!
Thanks, person on Reddit. You’re one of the good ones.
Unboxing the PhotoCam
Seeing as I now have a complete-in-box unit, let’s take the scenic route. It took me six years to get here, so yes, we’re going to enjoy it.
I learned, rather amusingly, that the box doesn’t just refer to it as the AOL PhotoCam, but rather “AOL’s PhotoCam”, sorta like Gary’s Meat Market or something. So personable. They say it’s as easy as 1-2-3, and I can’t agree there, but I get what they were going for. The box also advertises a lot of features that we take for granted nowadays, being able to connect the camera to your TV or PC to view your shots, creating cards and Web pages with your photos (“Post an AOL Photo Personal and find your soulmate!”, it boldly suggests), even emailing to share your shots. The box is undated, but 1998, 1999, doesn’t matter. It was a different time.
Inside the box, in a thicker inner cardboard box that keeps the outer carton’s shape, you get the camera itself, an AOL-emblazoned carrying case (I now have like four of these, but I still find ’em cool), a serial cable (later units also came with a USB cable), an A/V out for your TV, an AC adapter, four alkaline batteries (which mine didn’t come with–I’m assuming our Reddit friend tossed the no doubt now-leaky ones, and that’s alright), and a “step-by-step custom manual”. What’s custom about it, dunno, but it’s full color and a fun little lookthrough. It also comes with camera drivers and MGI PhotoSuite SE, which is a photo editor and camera transfer tool, on CD-ROM.
Age turns us all to goo, unfortunately, and some of the bags were starting to disintegrate into a fine, musty powder, and the plastic window on the sleeve for the PhotoSuite disc was sticking to the disc itself. I swiftly replaced it with one of the spare slimline jewel cases that that batch of bizarre student final short films I picked up from the thrift store came in. All the bags went in the trash, also. I don’t know what that powder was, and I’m not getting emphysema just to keep the packaging intact.
All shots from the rest of this post come from the last PhotoCam I bought, and not the one from Reddit. That one’s pure. It even still has the plastic film covering the lens and LCD screen, and I intend to keep it that way so I always have a spare in case the used one dies on me. They’ve all gone that way so far. (Fun aside: all of my broken PhotoCams are the Plus models, which had additional onboard storage. Both my working ones are the plain PhotoCam models. Aside from storage, they’re otherwise identical. I just found the delineation amusing.)
Test shots from midsummer
The moment I got a working unit at long last, I took it out on a walk. This was high in the sky late June sunny weather, and it’s been bright and dry this past summer, so rather ideal conditions for any camera, let alone such an old one. I should mention that half of these photos were taken with default settings, while the other half were taken with exposure compensation set downward. I think the default settings are weirdly bright–set it to -0.6 or -1.2 to reduce that blown out colorless look in bright sunlight. (Indoors, the default settings are fine.)
I was surprised and a little disappointed when I finally got the photos going on a bigger screen. This was when I realized that the PhotoCam was the later DC-620 and the shots look completely different to the DC-600 I used in “Cammy Revisits the PhotoCam”. That camera had a really lovely, soft, natural bloomy look to it in the right light, while these looked noisier and ringier, not at all what I was expecting. With the exposure reduced, though, the ringing feels a lot more filmic, almost like 8mm slides scanned in at 640×480. Even some of the default settings shots have that vibe to it, especially when the color temperature gets set to the warmer end of the spectrum. I just think this camera is a little ugly when it’s blown out.
Test shots from early October
Now we get into the really good shots. Three months later, me and my mom went up to one of our favorite hiking spots to have some dinner, chat, and get more sample shots with the PhotoCam. This is Big Pocono State Park. It’s partially the home base of Camelback, a ski resort that draws a lot of people to our area every year. They maintain ski lifts and stuff up on the mountain, but the state park itself is open for anyone who just wants to hang out and peek out at the Delaware Water Gap from great heights. Seriously, what a cool spot to wander.
The high altitudes, the unobstructed blue skylines, the fact that it’s still somehow ungodly hot and sunny out despite being a week into October, the nevertheless changing colors of the trees and bushes, it all made for a really killer photo shoot that I’m happy to share with you. We were by ourselves for most of it, so it was just peaceful, late afternoon chatting about chipmunks and the pine trees there and their odd shapes and weirdly tough pinecones in between getting shots. It was nice, and the camera itself booted up quick and my shots rarely looked as shaky as my hands felt every time I went to take a picture.
Issues with the PhotoCam, and the fleeting nature of retro digicams
While I do genuinely love taking photos with the PhotoCam, it’s nowhere close to perfect. Owning five of these things, you can imagine I know better than anyone what goes wrong on them, and even my working ones can’t escape the fact that they’re approaching 30 years old.
By far, the biggest fault on any of my units is the battery door. It’s plastic on plastic, literally two tiny hooks in two sprocket holes, holding in four spring-loaded AA batteries that will indeed pop open the door with some force. On one of my broken ones and my Pretec, the battery door doesn’t even close anymore, hanging loose and necessitating holding it in with your hand, and that shit hurts after a few minutes! Even on my working units, I still nurse the door by holding it shut just so I don’t end up with another broken door.
The way I’ve been using the camera is to leave the battery door open (and thus the camera off) between shots and only holding it in as long as it takes to take the shot and save it, but opening the door means the camera loses power and forgets its settings. This means no accurate date and time, and every time I turn it on, I have to reset the exposure settings. You might ask why I don’t just tape the door shut or something, and while that would work (and look super trashy), on my Pretec, I’d end up with a nastily hot battery door from holding it shut for too long, suggesting a short. I really would not want to be trying to peel tape off (or worse, scrambling to get the CF card out of) a hot camera in the event of the batteries melting down inside it.
It’s crazy how badly the door was designed. On my Canon PowerShot A20, which also takes four AA batteries, there’s no less than two clips that have to be finagled to get to the batteries, and it all feels very solid as a result. Granted, Canon is a much more reputable brand than Pretec, and this was four years later into the digicam game, so it’s not surprising they improved on that. Still, an awful design choice and it puts a small damper on the fun. (At least on the proper PhotoCam, I’ve never had the heat issues. Still not chancing it, though.)
Getting photos off the PhotoCam is thankfully pretty bulletproof compared to the Pretec. With the Pretec, I’d have to run PhotoRec on the CF card, and it wasn’t guaranteed that any specific shot would be found and be transferable. With the PhotoCam, shots show up in a DC620 folder and you can just drag them off the card. Unfortunately, despite now owning the eMachines Box, a computer with a serial port, I wasn’t able to get MGI PhotoSuite to detect the camera directly. I’m betting the TWAIN (an ancient Windows API for retrieving images from cameras and scanners) driver that comes on that CD-ROM doesn’t work properly on XP, and there are no 9x drivers for the eMachines W3507 due to its, uh, youthfulness, so I can’t even dual-boot 98 or Me to see if it works there. (I tried! Me couldn’t even see the CD-ROM drive. No, this is not a Me-specific issue, sit your goofy ass down.)
Of course, out of five total units (four PhotoCams and a Pretec), I have two and change working ones. That’s not great in terms of longevity. I’ve seen dead battery doors, failing memory, weird abnormalities in photo retrieval, the whole ball of wax. Even the rubber grip on the side can get a little sticky all these years later. These were really early, consumer-grade (there’s no zoom of any kind on the PhotoCam, even) digital cameras, and they weren’t meant to be used this far into the future. No digital camera was. Even the EasyShare has issues saving images or working properly pending what batteries I give it.
I think this whole adventure has shown me that I shouldn’t be too attached to any specific retro digicam. They break down, they’re not user-serviceable, and they’re, at the end of the day, commodity items. They were meant to be replaced. I still love retro digicams, but now that I own three different models from three different manufacturers, I realize that the enjoyment I get out of using one applies to them all. If anything, it’s especially interesting to see how different cameras cope differently with direct sunlight, low light, bright colors (reds especially), halos, even just how they feel in the hands and how slow or fast they save photos. When they die, it is what it is. We thank it for its service, we get another, perhaps a completely different brand altogether, and we experiment some more.
Oh God now he’s getting philosophical
What I wanted to do here was wrap up the PhotoCam saga for myself. I never intended it to become this multi-year quest; I just got broken cameras or the wrong cameras one too many times. Maybe it would’ve felt silly or wasteful had I just repeatedly bought PhotoCam listings one after another in a couple month period, getting it twisted until one finally worked out. There were also plenty of times where cheap listings for the PhotoCam would dry up, and all that’d be left were the assholes selling sealed boxes for $400. It just happened to take this long in the end, and it never felt right to drop it before I finally got what I was after.
Every time I think about the PhotoCam, I’m transported to a very different time in my life not even that long ago. A lot’s happened since 2019! I’d never held a job, driven a car, drawn any of my characters, flown on a plane, been to another country, been out drinking with friends, none of that. Somnolescent and my relationship were respectively seven and six months fresh when I wrote “Cammy vs. the PhotoCam”. I was talking to different people. Everything felt way more important. I’d spend long hours writing up all these Somnolescent website updates for people because that’s all we were up to, blog posts and redesigning our sites over and over. When people would talk shit about me, it felt like it’d be with me forever, and we had to fuck with those people back to get them to go away.
26 isn’t even old, but you start to feel it more as the years go on and your life experiences grow. Standing at the register at jobs thinking “goddamn, I’m 25 now, how do I want to spend that?”. What looked like forever turned out not to be. Everyone moves on, yourself included. What you prioritize changes. Things generally come to a close, and it’s when they don’t, even the dumb shit, that they usually stick out to you the most. I never got my PhotoCam. Now I have! This bridge into a completely different world I lived in, six silly years of on-and-off hunting for an AOL-branded camera, can finally come to a close. It was worth it.
Where do you expect to see this camera pop up next? I might take it to Wales with me next year. I didn’t this year because I was too scared of it immediately breaking. That’d be just my luck. I think I’m more okay with that possibility now, though, and it’s not just because I have a kindly-donated spare.
Super good post. What a journey.